


CELESTIAL BODIES

by spicyshimmy



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-22
Updated: 2011-09-22
Packaged: 2017-10-23 23:08:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/256105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyshimmy/pseuds/spicyshimmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anders keeps count of all the times he flirts with Nathaniel Howe, which is--coincidentally--all the times Nathaniel Howe doesn't flirt back. <i>It served Anders right for enjoying himself when there was still sort of a Blight on. Good to know the Maker was always there to get one in, when he could have been saving defenseless kittens from darkspawn slaughter or helping the mages not be trapped in lonely towers all the time. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	CELESTIAL BODIES

**Author's Note:**

> Written for neonowls on tumblr as a milestone requested; finally posted for Nathaniel Howe week on tumblr.

I.

  
Anders had been flirting with Nathaniel Howe for a while now, to absolutely no effect.

The more persistent his advances, the more unsubtle and embarrassingly overt, the more oblivious Nathaniel became, to the point where—if Anders believed the man had any sense of humor whatsoever—it began to feel like a purposeful joke.

Anders imagined himself saying _Good one, Nathaniel,_ and clapping the man on the back; then he laughed hard enough that the dwarf made a noise like he was having difficulty going to the bathroom.

It served Anders right for enjoying himself when there was still sort of a Blight on. Good to know the Maker was always there to get one in, when he could have been saving defenseless kittens from darkspawn slaughter or helping the mages not be trapped in lonely towers all the time.

‘Do you find this task funny, Anders?’ Nathaniel asked.

Anders sighed. ‘It never is, when you’re around,’ he replied. ‘No need to worry about that.’

‘It wasn’t worry I was feeling,’ Nathaniel said.

Of course it wasn’t.

 

II.

  
‘If I never see the Feravel Plains again, I’ll take my vows and trade in my pretty mage skirt for robes of the chantry,’ Anders said, because the party was being particularly quiet, and because he was bored, and because there was a rock in his shoe and no one seemed to care; the least they could do was stop while he fixed it, but _no_ ; they were all addicted to toughing things out and squatting in piles of mud and sniffing the earth to track everything that passed along the roads. The next thing Anders knew, they were going to take off their shoes and tattoo their bodies and attempt to join the nearest Dalish.

Ah, the Dalish. Proof of just how bad for a person’s stability so much nature could be.

‘Also, I really hate walking,’ Anders added. ‘Not in general, just…this much. It can’t be healthy.’

‘This is the twelfth time you’ve asked to stop today, Anders,’ Nathaniel said.

Anders clasped his hands together in front of his chest. The rock in his shoe was digging into the arch of his foot, giving him a massive blister. The Feravel Plains, like most plains, were plainly endless. ‘You’re very good at counting, Nathaniel.’

Nathaniel didn’t smile, though his left eyebrow twitched. ‘And it will only take _one time_ to silence you forever.’

He was in a charming mood, even for him.

‘Not at all,’ Anders replied. ‘I cannot be silenced.’

They waited a few moments, with Oghren scouting ahead on his stout dwarf legs, just a bobbing patch of dirty red hair in the midst of a golden field of swaying wheat. The warm breeze, the bright sunlight, the promise of fighting darkspawn until long after sundown with a rock in his boot… Freedom was a beautiful thing.

Still, Anders didn’t want to be proven wrong about his previous statement, so he indulged in a few loud sighs, then started talking again.

‘I can’t walk anymore,’ he said. ‘Nathaniel. _Nathaniel._ …Nathaniel, are you listening?’

‘Yes, Anders,’ Nathaniel replied, like he was beginning to hate the sound of his own name.

That was how Anders knew his plan was working. He scurried closer, wincing at every pinch of the rock against blistered skin. ‘Ooh, I just had a fantastic idea, Nathaniel: why don’t you carry me?’

Now, it was Nathaniel’s turn to sigh. He didn’t flee, but he clearly wanted to. ‘You’re the same size as I am, Anders. I can’t carry you. That would be…inefficient.’

‘Well, _yes_ , I suppose that’s true,’ Anders admitted. ‘But you have a much bigger neck, don’t you?’

‘Logistically, the size of my neck makes no difference,’ Nathaniel replied.

Now this was fun, Anders thought. Legitimately fun, and not a slanderous abuse of the hallowed term and all it stood for. Drawing Nathaniel out of his shell, getting him to exercise that voice of his, making him feel uncomfortable about the topic at hand—it was a little dance they did, very familiar, very friendly.

Nathaniel liked it. He just didn’t know it yet.

‘But it _could_ ,’ Anders said.

‘No.’ Nathaniel cleared his throat, his voice rusty as the hinge on the door of his prison cell. ‘It couldn’t. I don’t use my neck to _lift_ , Anders.’

‘As long as you lift Anders it doesn’t matter much _what_ you use, does it?’ Anders asked.

From somewhere just behind them, the Warden-Commander let out a slight cough; there was no reason it _couldn’t_ have been a laugh. He was a quiet one—never quite let onto what he was thinking—but Anders liked to think that he found their banter ribald and witty, far more charming than anything else he’d been exposed to on his travels. What other reason could he have for holding his tongue and letting them all go to town?

He obviously enjoyed listening to them on some primal level. He knew fine repartee when he heard it, like a connoisseur of conversation.

‘Out of the question,’ Nathaniel said. ‘I won’t hear any more of this.’

Poor, innocent Nathaniel. What he didn’t realize was that just because he wasn’t listening didn’t mean he wouldn’t _hear_ anymore; he could stopper his ears with his fingers all he liked, but Anders would still be talking.

 

III.

  
Kal’Hirol led to Anders’s first experience with the Deep Roads, and he couldn’t say he liked them all that much. There was something about traveling for days into the belly of the earth with nothing but the stench of flesh and cold iron to keep him company that put Anders off his appetite. Not to mention there was the little issue of the broodmothers.

Anders _hated_ broodmothers, and it was a discovery he could have gone his whole life without making.

He also hated stairs made of stone and what looked like meat, childer grubs, the sounds made by childer grubs, golems, and all assorted darkspawn. Everything was a new level of disturbing and creepy, and just when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, a group of shrieks popped out of the ground, doing a whole lot of—what else?— _shrieking_.

‘You’re looking sour, mage,’ Nathaniel said as they made their way into the hills.

‘I’m sorry, are you talking to me?’ Anders asked. ‘Because there are _two_ mages here, and we both have names. I know it’s a lot to remember, while you’re licking the dirt and communing with footprints or whatever it is you _nature_ types do. If you’d like, you can refer to us as ‘the handsome one,’ and ‘the _incredibly_ handsome one,’ how does that sound?’

‘It’s called tracking.’ Nathaniel paused. ‘…Are those my only options?’

‘You’re welcome to try and come up with something more accurate.’ Anders picked his way carefully up the rickety wooden stairs that led out of the caves. ‘You could call me _devastatingly_ handsome, instead of incredibly. I’m not all that specific. Rather easy, in fact, which was what they always used to say in the Circle—haha!’

Anders was in the middle of laughing at his own joke when one of the steps gave way and he stumbled, almost crashing through into the ravine below. Nathaniel moved with instinctive speed, grabbing him under the elbow and hauling him to safety.

Anders grimaced at the rough treatment, if only to hide the spectacular grin threatening to spread across his face. He was hopeless, completely unrepentant, and in all likelihood doomed in the eyes of the Maker. Just getting by this long was defiance of the inevitable, an admirable skill, worthy of dwarven toasts and elvhen song. None of that mattered, however, because Nathaniel had, in some respect, proven that he was aware of Anders’s existence. That was a step up from the usual.

It was progress, especially for them.

‘Well,’ Anders said, offering Nathaniel a sly look of gratitude, ‘ _that’s_ more excitement than I’ve seen all day. Whoever built these steps ought to be ashamed of themselves. Whatever happened to a craftsman taking pride in his labor? People these days—what _is_ Thedas coming to?’

Then again, he reminded himself, all the men who’d stuck around taking the time to build things properly had _probably_ been murdered by darkspawn while they were in the midst of hammering. Such a shame. Fereldan tragedy at its finest.

‘Watch your step, Anders,’ was all Nathaniel said.

‘Why should I, when I have such a capable man to dog them for me?’ Anders rolled out his nearly-twisted ankle, then hurried to keep up with Nathaniel’s unstoppable strides. ‘I feel as safe as a rabbit in a warren with you at my side. All cozy and warm. Can’t you see me with a fluffy cotton tail?’

‘You…have a very strange sense of humor,’ Nathaniel concluded. At least he’d managed to work out that Anders _was_ joking, which was another step in the right direction.

Two whole steps in one day. Anders was going to be spoiled by supper.

‘Better than not having one at all,’ he countered neatly.

‘I take your point,’ Nathaniel said.

 

IV.

  
Soon enough, Anders was the one counting.

‘So, tell me,’ he began, flirtatious opening remark number seventy-seven, ‘how much do you have to practice to be able to pick a lock like _that_ , anyway? Does it work on bedroom doors? Does it work on belt buckles? Or can you only open chests—all chests, all the time?’

‘A lock is a lock, Anders,’ Nathaniel replied.

Anders leaned casually closer, trying to show off his more attractive side. ‘You are a poet of our time,’ he said. ‘That was just—I mean—really, do I have a tear in my eye?’

For some reason, Nathaniel didn’t gaze deeply into his orbs, or whatever it was people were supposed to do when they were encouraged so shamelessly. ‘You should carry a handkerchief,’ he suggested instead, and used his roguish talents to disappear into the shadows behind the bookcase.

‘I hate it when he does that, don’t you?’ Anders asked the Warden-Commander.

As usual, the big lug smiled and said nothing.

 

V.

  
‘Hah,’ Oghren said over the flicker and crackle of Nathaniel’s over-achieving campfire. Anders asked himself why it had to burn so bright and be so warm; Nathaniel was showing off, and anyone with two eyes could see it.

Anders glanced around the clearing, then scooted closer, warming his hands over the blaze.

After so many campfires and so many hahs of a similar nature, he was beginning to speak a little dwarf. That ‘hah,’ its individual pitch and cadence and the rumble of the belch lingering ever just beneath, was an opening for conversation, and Anders liked conversation. So few indulged in it these days.

He took it gainfully.

‘You are a man of few words and many smells, Oghren,’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ Oghren replied. Good man—or rather, good dwarf—but he actually meant it.

Anders resisted patting him on the back, if only because he didn’t know where that back had been. ‘You’re very welcome. I take it you have a comment to make about how much you dislike flowers or where your fleas are biting you again?’

‘Not fleas this time, magey,’ Oghren rumbled. ‘I’m thinking it’s bedbugs, or maybe some kinda _darkspawn_ vermin. Don’t know yet. Haven’t seen ‘em. But they’re bitin’ like they just can’t get enough of me.’

‘I hope they make you a happy man someday,’ Anders said.

Oghren scratched his chest, then his beard, then his belly, then his backside, then his beard some more, and finally settled on picking something out of one of the thick red plaits draped across his chest. It appeared to be the remains of dinner, probably not that evening’s, possibly a feast from last summer. The idea of those fingers even doing those braids in the first place made Anders feel delighted, alive, seized by the absolute impossibility of the whole wide world and everything in it: festering dwarves, murderous trees, silent warden commanders, and handsome rogues building fires on the open road…

‘You know, talking to you’s a lot like watching that flighty little elf fighting with his daggers,’ Oghren said, interrupting Anders’s picaresque thoughts. ‘It’s like…first you’re here, and then you’re way over there, but how’d you get to there from here, anyway?’

Anders beamed even wider than before. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ he replied.

‘Nah. ‘Course you wouldn’t.’ Oghren snorted. ‘But I know what you’ve been up to. Don’t think I haven’t seen you, just ‘cause my eyes are all the way down here and yours are all the way up there.’

Oghren, Anders decided, was rapidly becoming his favorite. ‘And what _is_ it that I’ve been up to?’ he asked. ‘I think, seeing as how it’s me, I have the right to know.’

‘You’re gettin’ all…gettin’ all _flirtatious_.’ Oghren leaned in close over the fire, looking like a nightmare, smirking or grinning or experiencing acute gas pains. Maybe it was some combination of all three. Maybe he was dying. Anders supposed that meant he was going to have to heal him, but that would mean touching him, and he still didn’t want to do that, favorite or no.

‘Slow down there, big boy,’ he said. ‘You must’ve heard all the _wrong_ rumors about the Circle. We’re naughty, to be sure, so _very_ naughty, but we’re not _dwarf_ naughty. That’s a completely different level, my friend, but don’t worry—there’s someone out there for everyone.’

‘Heugh.’ Oghren’s eyes crossed, then righted themselves. ‘That ain’t what I’m talking about, so stop doing your dagger-words thing.’

‘Couldn’t stop if I wanted to, knew what you were asking, or tried,’ Anders replied.

‘Now that’s what I like about you,’ Oghren said. ‘You don’t pretend to be smarter than you’re not.’

‘Precisely,’ Anders agreed, despite not knowing what that dwarven riddle meant.

A branch snapped underfoot from nearby, which signaled the Warden-Commander’s return from his scouting mission. Nathaniel never let them know when he was lurking nearby, but the Commander was a mage, and had precious few skills when it came to cutting his way through the wild, bless his wee, sheltered heart.

Of course, he _had_ united all of Ferelden to defeat the Archdemon and the Blight—or so the rumor went; he didn’t relish talking about it, or even talking at all—but what had he done for them lately?

It was easier for Anders to think of him as just another Circle mage, from _his_ Circle, no less. After that, he couldn’t bring himself to cower in awe of someone whose origins were so much like his own. That could lead to all sorts of dangerous things, like being in awe of oneself, which seemed dangerously egotistical.

‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten our little talk,’ Oghren said, only a little ominously.

‘I’d never!’ Anders patted the air nearby him, instead of his shoulder. ‘At least not until you’ve finished drinking for the night.’

‘Good evening, Oghren,’ Nathaniel said, melting from the shadows nose-first, like the prow of a magnificent sea-vessel slicing through the waves. The favoritism shown was pointed and it was hurtful; Anders clutched at his chest, but his agony went unnoticed.

 

VI.

  
Anders’s self-control lasted him all the way to Amaranthine and a table at the Crown and Lion, while the Warden-Commander made some inquiries about the missing Orlesian warden, and Oghren attempted to fit himself beneath a cask of mead in order to drink directly from the tap. Anders sat on a grimy wooden bench, back to the door, and fixed Nathaniel with his best accusatory look.

‘You like him more than me,’ he said.

Simple facts. Those were always best to start with.

‘I…beg your pardon?’ There was a slightly pained expression on Nathaniel’s face, as though he’d allowed himself—for one devastating moment—to believe that he could share a pint with Anders in a social situation and not have it turn into an ordeal closer to the Joining.

It served him right for being such an optimist. Didn’t he know where that got people? Locked up in a tower and talking to a cat for company, that’s where.

‘The dwarf,’ Anders clarified, indicating Oghren, stumpy little legs barely visible as he squeezed himself beneath the barrel. ‘You’re always… Always _complimenting_ him on his _swordsmanship._ It’s insulting to those of us who don’t have swords. For example: you never tell me how big my fireballs are.’

Something passed over Nathaniel’s face like a spasm. Was he attempting to smile? No, Anders decided; that bliss was too much to hope for.

Instead, Nathaniel glanced into his mug, searching for his future in the dregs, then back to Anders again, searching for nothing at all—but especially not common sense. ‘Are you _certain_ what you’re drinking is whiskey?’

‘I’m not drunk.’ Anders sniffed, offended by the very thought. ‘I don’t get drunk, Nathaniel. I could drink every man here under the table—one day—but that’s beside the point. _You_ are _avoiding_ the _subject_.’

‘If I am, it’s likely because I don’t…quite understand it,’ Nathaniel admitted. ‘You want my opinion on your fighting skills? They’re exemplary—but magic is hardly my area of expertise. It wouldn’t be my place to comment on what you do well. I should think the Warden-Commander would know, if anyone. Perhaps you should ask him about it.’

‘Oh, wonderful; I’d die of old age waiting to hear anything from _him,_ ’ Anders said. He was aware, distantly, that the conversation was beginning to spiral out of his control—and when didn’t it?—but there wasn’t much he could do about it now, except go along for the ride. He hoped it was a fun ride, or at least a fast one. ‘Does that seem fair to you? That I should get no thanks at all just because I’m a mage? That’s discrimination. And here I thought you were like me, Nathaniel. I thought we _understood_ each other.’

Nathaniel took a careful sip from his tankard; perhaps he hoped the pause would give him time to think. It wasn’t often that a dashing rogue like Nathaniel ever required extra preparation, and Anders couldn’t help but feel proud of himself for garnering some noticeable results.

‘You are the one who came up with that analogy,’ Nathaniel said at last.

Anders couldn’t help it. He simply had to pout. ‘You’re being willfully cruel, now. All I want is to be a part of the group. Included. _Accepted._ For once in my wretched mage life…’

‘Fine, Anders,’ Nathaniel said. ‘Your fireballs are very—large. And warm. I am often assaulted by dreams of flaming darkspawn thanks to your enthusiasm. Does that serve?’

‘It’ll do, for now,’ Anders replied. ‘But if you want to tell me more about the flaming things in your dreams, I’m all ears.’

 

VII.

  
Something in the Warden-Commander’s nature compelled him to give them all strange little gifts from the containers he pried open over the course of their adventures. It was a bit haphazard and always peculiar—an _I found this in the garbage and thought of you_ type of thing, but at the same time it was touching. Sweet. Downright hilarious when it was happening to the others, too.

The latest honor was Nathaniel’s, a bronze instrument of precision that thrilled Anders to his cockles with the perfection of the opening line it gave him.

He was well over one hundred flirtatious comments and counting now, and still Nathaniel refused to take the bait. But that didn’t mean Anders was about to give up hope, either. Had the Hero of Ferelden given up against the Archdemon just because the fight would be tough? Where would Anders be if he’d decided to stop at, say, _six_ escape attempts rather than seven? Tenacity was the key—key to what, Anders had no idea, but _tenacity_.

At least it sounded convincing.

‘Say, Nathaniel,’ Anders said, wending his way toward the man in question as he tinkered with his prize, ‘is that a _sextant?_ ’

‘Yes,’ Nathaniel said.

Once again, Anders thought, there was just—he was—how could he possibly— _no one was that dense._

He’d try again. _Tenacity._ ‘ _Sextant_ ,’ Anders repeated.

‘…Yes,’ Nathaniel also repeated.

‘Well that’s just funny, isn’t it?’ Anders said. And it _was_ funny. The word itself was ridiculous; someone should have thought for a moment before they came up with it, but they hadn’t, and now there were all these people out there using these _sextants_ without thinking about the implications.

People like Nathaniel Howe were using sextants. On purpose.

Anders knew he should have gone for something just a little more obvious—like, for example, ‘Is that a sextant in your hands or are you just happy to see me?’ Of all the times to choose to be subtle, Anders was a fool for ignoring his first instinct, what was natural, the gifts he’d been graced with at birth, the opposite of subtle, the mage’s equivalent of dwarven forge-hammers.

In layman’s terms: he was going for spell wisps when he should have been breaking out the fireballs.

‘Not particularly.’ Nathaniel gave him one of his dry looks, then glanced around the hall of the keep in an attempt to find a distraction from the conversation. The joke was on him; there was no distraction, just a few nobles milling about, gossiping about noble things, and in the epic battle of who those nobles hated more—son of a traitor to the crown or delightfully charming apostate—nobody won. ‘Do you not know what a sextant is, Anders?’

Thrown off guard by the simplicity of the question, Anders panicked, and made a fatal mistake. ‘No,’ he said.

Not even a quip. Not even a _hah_.

It was his most shameful work yet.

‘It is an instrument one uses to measure the angle between two objects,’ Nathaniel explained. ‘…One employs it to study the location of celestial bodies.’

‘You…like…studying celestial bodies?’ Anders asked, already dying of boredom, gasping for air like a grounded fish.

‘I think I’ll go do that right now,’ Nathaniel said. He made his escape gracefully—not with a puff of miasmic smoke and a decoy; that kind of drama just wasn’t his style—leaving Anders in the hall with his arms hanging at his side, mouth open, about to literally kick himself for missing the most golden opportunity of all: ‘If you like celestial bodies that much, I’ve got a moon for you to study right here!’ And then he’d turn around and point to his arse and even Nathaniel would have to understand the implications, as they’d no longer be implications, but something finally overt.

That was how it was supposed to go. Anders had no idea why he’d missed two golden opportunities in the space of mere seconds.

Something was wrong with him. Perhaps it was the thin Amaranthine air, the darkspawn taint, the chaos of broodmothers his life had become. He was never this dreadful, and usually managed to make up for it with some modicum of initial success. And talk about dedication to a single task!

Anders didn’t know how to be determined, not even about freedom or laziness or his own physical comfort.

‘Heh,’ Oghren said behind him.

Anders jumped. ‘You move a little _too_ quietly for a dwarf,’ he said, smoothing the fronts of his chasind robes.

There was still a way to salvage this. It was more exertion than he was accustomed to, but the Warden-Commander himself liked making them sweat.

‘For what it’s worth, _I’d_ get what you were saying,’ Oghren said, then, ‘Heh-heh. _Sextant._ ’

‘ _Thank you_ ,’ Anders said.

At least the dwarf appreciated him.

 

VIII.

  
There were few things Anders actively pursued. Escaping the tower had always been a lot of work, but he’d been bored, and relieving his boredom was the real reason behind those attempts; it was something to think about, each scheme wilder and more implausible than the last, never compensating for what happened once he crossed the lake and found himself out there in the real world.

Ferelden was a large place; Anders always told himself he’d blend in, be lost in the crowd, just one of the fellows. But then there was the Blight and things got a little less crowded, and the tower got a little more stifling, and he kept at it because he didn’t know anything else. There wasn’t anything else he could do, except chat with Mister Wiggums, who’d exhausted all topics, and who was starting to smell—unhappily—of old fish.

The whole Nathaniel thing had started out as more of a joke hobby than a serious pursuit, same as the rest. But now that Anders had failed at it—one hundred and fourteen times and counting—he was beginning to realize something: that he was a creature of habit, on the one hand, and on the other, that he seemed to have a psychologically disturbing obsession with trial and error.

Especially the error part.

Maybe he was just one of those people who enjoyed dooming themselves to failure after failure. Maybe he didn’t really want to succeed.

But all those thoughts were too deep for his particular brand of self-study. It felt too much like getting to know Anders, and the truth of the matter was, Anders didn’t want to know the man. He seemed a tolerable fellow, one he could see sticking around but only out of necessity.

If he had his choices, he might have taken someone else.

So long as that someone didn’t make him _do_ too many _things_.

 

IX.

  
‘Anders,’ Nathaniel said one night while their traveling party sat gathered around the fire. Sigrun and Oghren were engaged in a contest of belching that seemed to be over ownership of a small wooden horse, and the Warden-Commander was busy communing with the spirits, or whatever it was he did when he was silent for long periods of time, staring into the forest, neither nearby nor far away.

He’d saved Ferelden from a Blight. He’d earned the honor of being eccentric.

Anders had always assumed his peculiar nature had something to do with his being a warden, but Anders was a warden now too—they all were—and it hadn’t inspired him into any prolonged contemplative silences. If anything, he talked more now than ever. And Oghren and Sigrun were, of course, the opposite of silent. So as far as the Warden-Commander was concerned, it had to be something else.

‘What’s that?’ Anders looked over Nathaniel’s shoulder, filling a role that even he didn’t understand anymore. What he did understand was that the show had to go on. ‘ _Me?_ ’

‘There is no one else by the name of Anders here,’ Nathaniel said.

He was good at making fact seem like conversation when the two were opposites. Anders had never met a man so determined to keep from developing any humors whatsoever. But there he was, and there Anders was with him, and they were both game for playing their parts.

‘At your service, then,’ Anders said. He had trouble bowing from a sitting position, but he managed it somehow. ‘Did you need me to freshen up the fire for you?’ He wiggled his fingers suggestively. ‘Add some ice to your water? Remove an uncomfortable _root_ from beneath your bedroll?’

‘You seemed rather interested in my sextant, when last we spoke,’ Nathaniel said, expertly navigating the traps and pitfalls Anders had set up in the conversation by pretending they didn’t exist. ‘I thought perhaps I might show you how to use it.’

‘You want to show me…how to appreciate celestial bodies?’ Anders asked.

‘And measure the distance between them and the horizon,’ Nathaniel said.

Anders leaned closer. ‘That sounds an awful lot like _stargazing._ ’

Nathaniel leaned further away. ‘That must be because it is.’

He rose without waiting to see whether or not Anders would accompany him. At the center of the circle, the fire sizzled and popped, hitting a pocket of tree sap in the branches that were burning. Oghren let out a particularly fearsome belch, then chortled, clearly pleased with his latest attempt. It was as if the Maker was trying to tell him—sending a message to Anders personally—that he wouldn’t be missing much if he took his leave now.

If the sounds weren’t his cup of tea, then the smells that followed would curl his toes.

Anders wasn’t even sure why he was hesitating in the first place. The man he’d flirted with one hundred and fifteen times had just suggested they spend time together alone, staring at the twinkly stars in the sky. _And_ he hadn’t been struck in the head recently, at least as far as Anders knew. It was perfect, just the opportunity he’d been waiting for.

All he had to do was get up and follow.

Anders managed it after a moment, meticulously picking the burrs from his skirts before heading off. There was an open clearing nearby their campsite, surrounded by craggy rocks, with a crumbling, judgmental statue standing to one side. Anders moved through the long, dewy grass, feeling the hem of his robes grow damp, until he reached the little hill where Nathaniel was crouched, becoming one with a rocky outcropping. He was using the sextant in a way that seemed perfectly boring to Anders, considering the thing was called a _sextant_ and should therefore have involved a little more _sex_ and a little less _tant_.

Otherwise it was just false advertising.

Nonetheless, Nathaniel had it held up to his eye, and seemed engrossed in whatever it was he was observing.

‘You didn’t even bring a blanket to sit on.’ Anders settled himself on a nice, flat rock instead, near enough to Nathaniel that he wouldn’t feel as though the night was a total waste. ‘You must not invite people out that often, Nathaniel. You have to be more aware of the comforts of others.’

‘I’m sorry?’ Nathaniel asked. It wasn’t an apology so much as a question, like _beg pardon?_ or _what are you going on about?_

There was something about the moonlight and the stars and the sextant that made his hooked nose look even more monstrous than usual. If only his feelings were as plain as the nose on a Howe’s face, then Anders wouldn’t be in this situation at all.

‘Nothing, nothing.’ Anders eschewed the argument in favor of scooting closer, dangerously near to resting his chin against Nathaniel’s firm shoulder. ‘Which delightful body are we viewing? I had no idea you were such a voyeur, Nathaniel. I learn something new about you every day.’

‘The stars are clear from this part of the Wending Wood,’ Nathaniel said. He put his hand on Anders’s shoulder, and held out his sextant.

It wasn’t the instrument Anders had dreamed of holding, but for once, his hands weren’t empty.

 

X.

  
No one had ever said being a Grey Warden was going to be easy. In fact, if Anders recalled correctly, they’d all said it was going to be the opposite of that: hard, so very hard, probably impossible for this scurrilous lot, and they’d looked so grave while they said it you had to believe they were right. There’d been that one recruit who wanted it so badly, and of course she hadn’t survived the joining; instead, the accidents who were there because of sheer dumb luck—who’d never even thought of it before—all made it through, suffering no more than a dull headache and some dizziness afterward, while the one person who actually deserved it died right there on the floor without ever seeing her dreams realized.

Anders knew it wasn’t fair; ‘things that weren’t fair’ were a part of every-day life as he understood it, as he lived it. Injustice everywhere, no way to avoid that.

Except by running away—which some people did more often than not.

Only you couldn’t run away from being a Grey Warden, not as far as Anders knew. The Deep Roads would always be waiting. The very colors of the Fade itself were changed by the darkspawn taint.

But, considering what they’d already seen, everyone managed to maintain a realistic outlook on the requirements for the job. It was going to be messy. It was going to be awful. Darkspawn here, darkspawn there, darkspawn everywhere you turned—punctuated by the appearance of broodmothers, which were worse than your run of the mill grunts by a long shot, what with all the tentacles. There was also the possibility of another Archdemon; while unlikely, it might still happen in Anders’s lifetime, though that had been shortened, too—unless you listened to vengeful, grouchy templars, in which case Anders’s prospects had never been good from the start.

It was hard not to think about it, even when Anders was a deft hand at not-thinking about the important things. That was a skill more specified and more protracted than the skills you needed to go through, for example, a Harrowing and come out the other end alive, kicking, screaming, and not abominable. If you honed it properly, it might even last your entire life.

The same way Nathaniel focused on keeping his bow in good shape, testing the weight and balance of his arrows; the same way Oghren sharpened his blade and Velanna practiced incinerating helpless targets—Anders had weapons for his craft, too, weapons of avoidance, and they served him well indeed, the only constant in each fancy flight.

If only there’d been a way to form an arcane shield against the night. Or stop sleeping altogether. Or just…not dream.

Any one of those things would have been nice.

Normally, when Anders admitted to having nightmares, they were about the usual mage-related topics. Templars, for the most part, but also dim and distant recollections from a childhood nearly forgotten, the memory of what it was like to be taken from your parents far too young, the loneliness, the fear, the resentment, and so on. The power; the demons. All those tired tropes, which Anders assumed would someday stop mattering to him; then, he could finally stop pretending they’d stopped already.

Now, he had a whole new set to worry about. Whispers, voices, grinding words in a language he could almost understand, a message he needed to translate but never could; the heat of the earth, the fires of the forge. More tentacles. _Always_ more tentacles. And claws and teeth and scrabbling, long-fingered hands closing around his wrists and ankles. Sometimes there were mouths and they were never satisfied, always hungry. It was the hunger that lingered with him, that keening in his blood.

He would’ve been happy to ignore that glimpse into the depths for the rest of his life—however long it was, or however long it wasn’t.

Whatever the dreams were, whatever they meant, they didn’t make for decent rest. Anders resented his bed and the quiet of his room, the way he could measure some of the stars and put his mind to good use rather than wasting it with idle and directionless contemplation. He gave up on it quickly, like with most other things, then dressed and stepped outside; maybe he could head to the Crown and Lion until dawn to watch happy strangers get drunk and yell at each other and smash tankards over each other’s heads.

That was always enjoyable.

Darkspawn or no, seeing other people live their lives so simply never got old.

Empty hallways did: flickering candles in rusty braziers, long slants of shadow and the creak of old doors.

Anders stopped in the hall, halfway between stone columns. He wasn’t alone. He lifted his hands on instinct, ready to make with the magic—because you could never be too careful these days; all sorts of unsavory types were looking to profit where they could.

‘Ah,’ Nathaniel said. ‘What are you doing out here?’

‘Would you believe me if I said I was patrolling in order to keep the halls of Vigil’s Keep safe from intruders?’ Anders asked.

‘You’re far too lazy for that,’ Nathaniel said. ‘So no. I wouldn’t believe you if you said that.’

‘Then I won’t bother to say it.’ Anders folded his arms over his chest, still feeling the arcane potential at his fingertips. Yet he didn’t want to set Nathaniel on fire—at least, not all the time. ‘I’ll think of some other excuse. Just give me a moment.’

‘Was it the dream?’ Nathaniel asked.

Anders shouldn’t have been surprised. Nathaniel was the type to say it, just like that—as though talking about things seriously ever helped anyone with anything. If anything, it had the opposite effect; it usually made Anders feel worse, made him realize how bad things really were. This whole straightforward act Nathaniel had going for him would get old sooner rather than later, but Anders had to give him credit for consistency. One might even have said he was fascinated by it, though fascinated was such a strong word; it was more like a compulsion, the way some people picked at a scab and never let it heal.

‘You really don’t mince words, do you?’ Anders asked.

‘…I try not to,’ Nathaniel said.

‘That’s a waste of effort, you know.’ Anders hid a yawn in the shadows of his palm. ‘Just think of what you could accomplish if you weren’t trying so hard not to mince words all the time. I bet that takes a lot of mental acuity, a lot of wasted concentration.’

It wasn’t his best effort at banter, but circumstances were what they were—and that was _dire_ , still way more _tant_ than _sex_. Anders was tired, and he was anxious, and the dream was still fresh in his mind, blood and black bile, sharp teeth digging into soft flesh and stripping it from unclean bone. The last thing he needed was to be around Nathaniel, with his straightforward nature, when Anders was too tired to perform his usual conversational acrobatics.

He needed a good warm-up first, a bit of stretching, loosening the old muscles and gargling some cool elfroot tea.

‘Come with me,’ Nathaniel said. Then, he turned on his bootheel without waiting to see if Anders intended to follow, traveling back down the corridor that led to his chambers.

‘Oh, Nathaniel, do you really think I’m that easy?’ Anders called after him, trailing along despite his contrary choice of words. ‘I expect dinner first, or at the very least a drink or two. Six, preferably. I have an uncommonly high tolerance for whiskey; have I told you that before?’

Nathaniel didn’t rise to the bait; he merely opened his door and stepped within.

After a moment’s contemplation, another hesitation he could no more name than counter, Anders followed him inside.

It wasn’t the Crown and Lion, but he was feeling lazy, and the walk to Nathaniel’s room was much shorter than the walk into Amaranthine. Fewer drunks, way less entertainment, no attempts on his life, but it was warm and didn’t require putting boots on, and Anders told himself he was lucky—in a manner of speaking.

The room itself was as sparse as Anders had been expecting, not that he’d been thinking about it or anything that required even the slightest imaginative effort. It just made sense, given what Anders knew about the man. Nathaniel’s bow and arrows were leaned against a chair in the corner, his armor resting on a polished chest. His boots had been kicked half under the bed, and his covers were in disarray, as though he’d rolled out of them in a hurry, sleep interrupted by some sinister shared dream. He’d also lit a lamp, for which Anders found himself pathetically grateful.

He would have liked to pretend he wasn’t afraid of the dark, but he _was_ afraid of its shadows. The more he leaped at them, the closer they came.

He knew what was lurking in those shadows now, and he knew what made them.

So lamps were good. Anders _liked_ lamps.

There was nowhere to sit but the bed, which Nathaniel did, cross-wise, leaning his back against the wall. He sighed, then seemed to remember Anders was there.

‘Close the door,’ he suggested.

‘Is this a slumber party?’ Anders asked, though in a rare moment of compliance, he did as he was told. The latch fell softly into place, and Anders went about settling himself on the end of the bed, the corner of a bedpost digging into the small of his back. ‘We used to do this all the time in the Circle. Of course, we did a lot of _other_ things back then, too… There wasn’t much slumbering at all, now that I think about it. Maybe we should have called them something else. Like _wiggle parties_.’

‘I wasn’t aware that the Wardens experienced such dreams prior to my Joining,’ Nathaniel said. He had a keen instinct for knowing when Anders was speaking total nonsense, sharp perception that Anders was still uncertain whether or not to be grateful for the same way he was grateful for the lamp. ‘They can be…unsettling.’

‘You know, I’ve never been a sit around in the dark and talk about my problems type of person,’ Anders told him. Fair was fair, and this was fair warning.

‘I see.’ Nathaniel paused. He didn’t hesitate—that wasn’t his style—and the silence almost seemed like a chastisement. ‘…What type of person _are_ you then, Anders?’

‘You don’t really expect me to answer a question like that in the dead of night?’ Anders asked, covering a second yawn, this one only mostly fake. It was nice being in a room that wasn’t his; against all odds, the change of scenery was comforting, evidence that there was someone else in the keep, someone else in Amaranthine. Someone with boots, and a deadly bow, and a nose the darkspawn would pick out more easily.

Nathaniel sighed. He reached under his pillow and began to toy with a slender dagger, sharpening its blade against the special stone the Warden-Commander had found for him. Another one of his gifts—this one without a fancy name, no _sex_ and no _tant_. _I found this rock and I thought of you_ , Anders imagined, and smiled despite himself, then blanched when he realized what it all meant.

‘You sleep with a _knife_ under your pillow?’ he asked, somewhat appalled.

‘Not all of us have a fireball at our fingertips,’ Nathaniel reminded him.

‘Fair point,’ Anders said, a rare enough occurrence on its own. Anders only admitted verbal defeat when he was cornered or tired, or just the slightest bit fond.

He watched Nathaniel sharpen his blade for a time, feeling the rhythmic sound it made drill into his bones. His limbs grew heavy and his eyelids fluttered, lured into a false sense of restfulness by the warm light of the lamp and Nathaniel’s shadows next to it, strong and certain and unwavering between them. Anders had always found silence awkward—and silence in the company of others unbearable—but there was something about this state of being that was almost satisfactory. Add in a tabby to sit in his lap and purr, warm and sweet and small, and he’d have been downright content.

‘I am no stranger to nightmares,’ Nathaniel confessed, voice low over the sound of his whetstone.

‘Is this another stirring tale from your dark and twisted upbringing?’ Anders shifted closer, the better to lean against the wall at Nathaniel’s side. ‘If so, please feel free to continue—just try to make it sound more dashing, this time.’

‘All men have their fears in the Fade, so I’m told,’ Nathaniel said.

A general statement, instead of a personal one. Anders recognized the tactic all too well: offer something personal about yourself, realize just how personal it was, and scramble to cover up all signs of intimacy before anyone could trick you into expanding on it. In Anders’s case, he said something ridiculous. In Nathaniel’s, he said something profound. Both were cousins of the other, meaning less than they might, offering equal insight.

‘Not me,’ Anders said. ‘I faced my fears in the Fade. Came out in one piece, too. Isn’t so pretty when you’re more of a healer than a fighter—fireballs are so much less _effective_ in the Fade, did you know that?—but at least you can just run around in circles healing yourself until the demons tire and then, GRREAHH! You’ve survived your Harrowing.’

Nathaniel cleared his throat. ‘That is…a strange tale.’

Anders shrugged. ‘The stranger they sound, the truer they are,’ he replied.

‘Surely it left a more lasting impression on you than that.’ When Anders looked up, Nathaniel’s gaze was so strong and so piercing that it was almost like a spell, a crushing prison or something equally unpleasant. Anders squirmed, but the feeling wouldn’t go away.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked, struggling to remain light-hearted. ‘Isn’t that a lasting impression? ‘GRREAHH!’ is _definitely_ a lasting impression.’

‘You fled your tower,’ Nathaniel said. As if Anders really needed to be reminded—he’d done it seven times, and seven was too high a number to forget.

‘And you fled your…whatever it was,’ Anders countered. ‘Marches or marshes or Marsha’s…’

‘Then we are talking in circles.’ Nathaniel was no longer sharpening his knife. He set the whetstone aside and returned the blade beneath his pillow, where he honestly thought something like that belonged.

‘Ah, but circles are all I know,’ Anders said. ‘At least, _the_ Circle _used_ to be all I knew. But that didn’t seem like it was fair. Even a rat could leave the tower under less suspicion than someone like me, and while I’ve been _called_ a rat in my lifetime…’

‘I can’t imagine why,’ Nathaniel murmured.

‘Wait a minute…’ Anders scratched a pesky stubbly spot on his cheek. ‘Was that a—did you just—are we _joking around_ , here?’

Nathaniel’s focus remained unbroken. Anders flinched at the color of his eyes, the way they bored holes right through a man’s brain, the shadows and the brightness in the moonlight. Then, Anders realized he was staring—no, _gazing_ , deeply, the way he’d been hoping Nathaniel might indulge in all this time.

He gulped, and stopped immediately.

‘It is the best way to combat nightmares, so I’ve found,’ Nathaniel informed him.

Anders fidgeted with his collar, or more specifically, with the feathers at the shoulders of his robes. He liked wearing these robes; they were Tevinter robes, and they were stylish, comfortable, didn’t look too much like an ugly dress. It wasn’t that they meant something to him metaphorically; he’d never be that person. He had the exact same number of his excuses at his fingertips as he had spells, all of them to deflect and protect and regroup and regenerate, allowing him to remain as he was for as long as possible. Unchanging.

‘I suppose I’d just like to have a dream that was mine for once,’ Anders said. ‘No templars, no First Enchanter, no Harrowing. No darkspawn, no broodmothers, no Deep Roads…’

‘No Blackmarsh,’ Nathaniel added.

‘Right, not that thing, either, whatever it is,’ Anders agreed. ‘Sounds positively ghastly. You’d think when naming these places _someone_ might have stepped in to say, ‘Look, I’m not trying to offend anyone, but maybe we should call it something a little more friendly—that way we can generate more robust tourism, and not basically predetermine that our little settlement _will_ be cursed sometime in the near future.’ And don’t even get me _started_ on the word sextant.’

‘What, exactly, is wrong with sextant?’ Nathaniel asked.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Anders said. ‘Only _everything._ ’

 

XI.

  
Anders woke the next morning in a cocoon of warmth. When he stretched, his fingers brushed against something sharp and cold beneath the pillow. He was awake instantly, tangled in rough blankets, nearly falling out of bed.

Not his bed, either.

‘Heh,’ Oghren said from the doorway. ‘Looks like you got what you were after, huh, mage? Always knew you had it in you.’

‘Whossat?’ Anders asked gracefully. A few moments later, he understood—Nathaniel’s room, nightmares, heartwarming and life-changing conversation about men and their dreams and their sextants—but as he looked around the place, he found that the bow and the leather boots were gone, and sunlight was pouring in through the window, and there was a cut on his knuckles from the knife under the pillow.

Anders knew that wasn’t a safe idea.

‘Unfortunately, I didn’t…’ Anders began, but Oghren was already gone. How he’d gotten there, why he’d come, and what he was thinking—or likely not thinking—would remain forever a mystery to everyone.

That was probably for the best.

Anders frowned at the room and the whetstone and the place by the bed where the bow had been, the place under the bed where the boots had been, and the dip in the bed where Nathaniel had been. He frowned at the sunlight and he frowned at himself, then very elegantly snuck out of Nathaniel’s room, so as not to have to explain to anyone else something he didn’t understand himself.

 

XII.

  
Despite how nice it had been—how nice and also frustrating—their rendezvous didn’t solve anything. If anything, it made things worse. Nathaniel continued as he had; Anders did the same, except the brazen flirtatiousness of yesteryear—or rather, yester _day _—no longer came as easily to him as lighting darkspawn on fire to preserve his livelihood and, occasionally, protect his fellow Grey Wardens; and it was almost as though that moment, sweet and important and good as it was, had never passed between them at all. Anders couldn’t trust Oghren to remember it; Oghren wasn’t only drunk at the time but arguably drunk _all_ the time, meaning for all Nathaniel acted and for all Oghren had forgotten, that night in Nathaniel’s bedroom talking about dreams and nightmares hadn’t been real. __

Anders had spent the night in Nathaniel’s bed, and according to everyone else, it _had never happened_.

‘If you spend a night in a rogue’s bedroom and no one’s there to hear it, does it really make a sound?’ Anders asked Sigrun, but she was busy with _The Seer At Seheron_ and didn’t answer.

But worse than the rest was when Anders overheard Nathaniel with Velanna, or more specifically _flirting_ with Velanna. Clumsy as it was, it proved a few things: that Nathaniel not only knew what flirting was but also how to do it, and he also knew how to continue manfully, despite Velanna’s willful decisions not to participate, without understanding how lucky she was to see that rare side of him at all.

Anders did what he had to—all he could do—which was subtly and underhandedly insult her at all turns, doing his Maker-damned best to undermine her self-respect and her self-confidence, a tactic he’d learned through observation of senior enchanters who pretended to be friends but secretly hated one other. It was a passive aggression that was more like a passive skill.

 _Unhindered Taunt,_ it might be called, or _Blissful Condemnation._

It was all so charming. Anders was an exemplary person.

‘Did you know that your fair, gray hair is venerated as a sign of wisdom and age in human culture, Velanna?’ Anders asked.

‘I… no,’ Velanna said. She still wasn’t accustomed to the human idea of sarcasm, and Anders could only hope that weakness would be her undoing. Tentatively, she lifted a hand to touch her hair, behind one gargantuan elvhen ear. ‘Is it really?’

‘Oh yes,’ Anders said. ‘Very, _very_ advanced years. Almost as if you’re ready to be locked away in a crypt forever. Everyone respects age, of course, but nobody really wants to look _at_ the ancient face of wisdom, if you know what I mean.’

‘I hardly think—‘ Velanna began, agitated now that the other boot had dropped. ‘I am _not_ ancient!’

‘Take it easy, that was a compliment,’ Anders said, in his best, most cheerfully mediating tone. ‘Trees are ancient, aren’t they? The really big, important ones with the thick bark and gnarled branches. You Dalish love that sort of thing!’

‘…You are comparing me to a tree?’ Velanna asked.

‘A very, _very_ old one,’ Anders confirmed.

It wasn’t his finest hour. It wasn’t even the same as baiting the dwarf, who deserved it for being smelly and awful. But Anders was a deft hand at avoiding guilt by now, and he couldn’t bring himself to care, twin spots of color rising high and proud Dalish cheeks.

 

XIII.

  
If the addition of Velanna to their charming group of champions and belchers and rogues had come near to ruining Anders’s life, then the next party member the Warden-Commander chose was without a doubt his favorite.

But that was only because the companion was a kitten, a little orange tabby with sharp claws and a darling pink tongue that curled whenever he yawned. He was the essence of perfection, and he required a name to suit that perfection; this opinion wasn’t shared by Anders’s fellow wardens, but they hardly mattered. None of them had soft, triangular ears or long, clever, ticklesome whiskers.

‘Would you like some milk, Ser Pounce-a-lot? Of _course_ you would, because you’re the _best_ kittums who _ever was_ , yes you are— _yes_ you _are!_ ’ Anders said, safe in the privacy of his own room at last.

‘Perhaps it isn’t the name that’s ridiculous, but your behavior over that animal,’ Nathaniel suggested from the doorway. It was open now, which was strange, because Anders had been certain to close it—in order to have some private time with his precious, fluff-bottomed cat.

‘I see you’ve descended to a lifestyle of breaking and entering once more, Nathaniel,’ Anders said, giving Ser Pounce-a-lot all the pets he desired before he left him alone with his milk. ‘That _isn’t_ going to encourage people to forget their first opinion of you as a dangerous criminal.’

‘Your door wasn’t locked,’ Nathaniel replied.

A likely story, coming from a man who picked all the Warden-Commander’s locks.

‘ _Civilized_ people knock first,’ Anders said. ‘Civilized people who aren’t _wanted criminals_.’

Nathaniel drifted into the room, leaning back against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest; the boiled leather vest and jerkin was as casual as he ever got. ‘Just ‘entering’ isn’t really a crime. As you can see, I haven’t broken anything.’

Anders couldn’t help but feel as though he was being watched, or observed, or _scrutinized_ , a prickly feeling down the back of his neck, creeping beneath his collar. But it was just like him to hunt someone’s attentions so fervently, then forget what he wanted to do with them once he had them at last.

Personally, Anders blamed Nathaniel for this turn of events. No one said his focus had to be so stealthy. Also, he’d made fun of Anders’s cat. Or perhaps he’d been making fun of Anders—or Anders _and_ the cat.  
Now _that_ was criminal.

‘You know, if you have a problem with the way I talk to my cat, you shouldn’t break into my room to hear it,’ Anders said. He still couldn’t pinpoint what Nathaniel was doing there in the first place, and it was making him peevish, ruffling Ser Pounce-a-lot’s scruff until his purring swelled to fill the room. ‘Just a suggestion—take it or leave it, or break into a chest to steal it. Whatever you like.’

‘I see that you’re feeding it,’ Nathaniel said.

‘ _Him_ ,’ Anders corrected. ‘And of _course_ I’m feeding him. I wouldn’t want Ser Pounce-a-lot to go hungry, now would I?’

Nathaniel didn’t arch his brow or flare a gargantuan nostril. ‘No. Of course you wouldn’t.’

‘That would be cruel,’ Anders added.

‘And you are not a cruel person,’ Nathaniel agreed. ‘Merely…not the type I would have pegged for being capable of caring for other creatures.’

‘How nice of you to set such an overwhelming store of faith in me.’ Anders leaned back against his heels. If he’d had fur—like Ser Pounce-a-lot—then it would have bristled. As it was, the stubble on his cheeks and chin was standing on end, scruff of its own sort with no one to pet it. ‘I _am_ a healer, if you recall, and I _think_ I might have healed you on more than one occasion, too. What was it—oh, yes, that’s right: giant bone dragon spirit had you in its cruelly-taloned grasp; you were crying out desperately for mercy from the Maker; and there was _someone_ out there in the field with a staff and an explicit knowledge of ancient healing lore keeping you alive and _mostly_ pain-free the entire time…’

‘Yes, I remember that, Anders.’ Nathaniel coughed lightly, into his polish-stained palm. ‘And…thank you for that, as well. I had been meaning to say it.’

Anders nearly had to reach up to keep his jaw from unhinging, forefinger under his chin, holding his mouth shut. ‘Well, that’s a first,’ he said finally. ‘Somebody actually thanking the healer. That never happens, not even in the stories. …So, Nathaniel, did you come all this way to show your gratitude by insulting my precious kitten?’

‘I did not intend…’ Nathaniel began, then shook his head. ‘No again. I came here for neither of those reasons. And the way wasn’t particularly long, either.’

‘You could at least _pretend_ it was an arduous journey.’ Anders sniffed. ‘It makes the whole experience a little more…meaningful, somehow.’

‘It was down the hall and around the corner, Anders,’ Nathaniel said.

There was no teaching him, no ounce of romance, no hint of drama. There was only a dark brow and a long nose, nice hair and thick leathers. Anders pulled in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. ‘Well _that’s_ not very exciting,’ he replied. ‘But, if not to sling insults at a poor, defenseless, _baby_ animal, why _did_ you come here?’‘

‘That…is a good question.’ Whatever the reason, Nathaniel probably already regretted it. Anders watched him curiously, the expression on his face no less unsettling in the fading afternoon light than it had been oh those many nights ago, when the shadows made him look so much more serious, so grave and somber and possibly, purposefully, intriguing.

Part of what had been so attractive about him in the first place had nothing to do with any intrinsic value Anders placed on serious things—rather, it was the opposite, his desire to ruffle that dour exterior until something shone like sea-polish through the dull outer luster. Something like a smile, or—Maker forbid—a laugh.

‘Are you expecting me to answer it for you?’ Anders asked finally.

‘I was searching for a proper answer for myself,’ Nathaniel replied. ‘Thinking, before I spoke.’

‘Wouldn’t know what that’s like, myself,’ Anders said.

‘No,’ Nathaniel agreed. ‘I _am_ aware of that.’

Anders watched him, marking his urge to pace the floor, and the exact moment he chose not to give in to it. ‘You’re remarkably good at this ‘thank you’ thing—did you know that?’

‘I only wondered if the dreams were still bothering you,’ Nathaniel said. ‘I have them often; have you found some way around them, then?’

‘Not particularly,’ Anders admitted. Ser Pounce-a-lot had finished his milk and was suddenly interested in Nathaniel’s boots; when Nathaniel noticed, he held himself stiff and still, as though he thought any movement, no matter how slight, would risk crushing an innocent kitten.

At least he was being careful. There was something quaint and brittle about his posture, about that obvious nervousness over so small a creature.

‘If you aren’t sleeping, it could be a danger to all of us.’ Ser Pounce-a-lot rubbed his face against Nathaniel’s ankle, one of the worn and dusty creases in his left boot. ‘But most importantly, it would be a danger to yourself.’

‘And to my cat?’ Anders asked.

‘…And to your cat,’ Nathaniel agreed.

‘Well _that_ won’t do at all.’ Anders held his hand out for the kitten to sniff, and rubbing at the trembling bristles of his whiskers, letting him push his cold, wet nose against his fingertips. He scratched and scritched and Ser Pounce-a-lot began to purr again; then, satisfied, he wandered away to a private corner of the room and began to lick himself.

The best thing about him wasn’t the unconditional love, which wasn’t a cat’s style anyway, but the sense of friendly independence, the fact that both of them liked each other very much, perhaps even loved each other, but they kept their grooming to themselves and recognized boundaries, having clever instincts and deep feelings when it came to personal space. A cat could want your attention for days before finally deigning to sit in your lap, and that was something Anders recognized, intimately, as familiar and natural to his own life theories as anything else in Thedas. They were of one mind, and that was just so comfortable, so pleasantly, eternally _nice_.

‘If you ever wish to talk again, Anders,’ Nathaniel said, free to move his feet at last, and therefore keen to depart, ‘you know where you may find me, at any hour.’

‘Yes, well, considering your propensity for breaking into other people’s property—’ Anders began.

But Nathaniel was already gone.

 

XIV.

  
It was only later that night when Anders realized, to his shock and horror, that _he_ had been as oblivious to _Nathaniel’s_ advances as Nathaniel had been—or so he’d always thought—to _Anders’s_.

It was enough to make a man want to hurl his boots across the room. Or it would have been, if Ser Pounce-a-lot hadn’t been prowling through the mysterious dark in some remote corner; accidentally harming his beloved kitten would be even worse than accidentally missing an advance from the man he’d been pursuing even more doggedly than Oghren searched out the last drop in a mug of ale.

It could hardly be considered his fault, Anders reasoned. He’d always been—or always tried to be—straightforward. Just because he launched himself the same way at everyone didn’t make him any less direct.

If Nathaniel wanted him to stop by his room for some more knife-sharpening, then he ought to have said so right up front, with a leer and a waggle of his brows and a hearty dose of innuendo, like any other normal person might. How was someone like Anders meant to crack the code of talking about nightmares and dreams and darkspawn? Those topics weren’t designed to put him in a naturally amorous state of mind.

He was a mage, not a mind-reader. And now he had a bone to pick with one Nathaniel Howe—smaller than a bone-dragon’s, but large enough.

It wasn’t that he was embarrassed; it was the principle of the thing more than anything else. Nathaniel had even intimated he wasn’t sleeping well, so that Anders didn’t have to feel guilty about barging in unannounced, or interrupting any important rogue-rest.

Anders shot out into the hall like a fireball from the Warden-Commander’s fingertips, then fizzled out and skidded to a halt, rubbing his chin. After a second’s thought, he closed his door behind him. There was no need for an innocent creature like Ser Pounce-a-lot to suffer the indignities he might face if left to roam the halls unsupervised. Oghren had murdered someone’s pet ferret in the Crown and Lion just the week before because he’d claimed it reminded him of a childer grub.

There was no reasoning with that dwarf when he was drunk, and seeing as how he was never sober, Anders didn’t feel like taking any chances.

He had half a mind to barrel straight into Nathaniel’s room once he’d made the so-called arduous journey—down the hall and around the corner—but then it occurred to him that he still had a chance to be the better person, and the idea was tempting.

It was his duty—nay, his privilege—to show Nathaniel what it meant to have proper manners. Anders was gifted with an instinctive grasp of social etiquette that he’d learned by existing in society for most of his life, and not living in the Free Marches alone, skinning bears and making necklaces of their teeth, or bonding with their cubs, raised amongst them like he was their own.

Anders knocked on the door, a gentle rap, knuckle to wood. He felt proper, and bit his lower lip.

‘Just a moment,’ Nathaniel’s voice came, muted, from the other side.

It was in that moment, with a clarity that could only be described as a thunderclap of life understanding, that Anders realized he had no idea what he was going to say, or even what he wanted to say. Not thinking before he spoke had finally betrayed him—or at least not thinking before he acted had.

But there was no time to rectify that now. What was done was done, what was knocked was knocked, and flying by the seat of his robes had served Anders well enough in the past. It’d also gotten him manacled in the past, and sometimes that was exactly what the herbalist ordered.

After some fuss with the latch, the door swung inward. True to form, Nathaniel was there; he’d removed his armor for the night, and was clad in a particularly hideous homespun shirt that looked just like the clothing he’d been wearing when the Warden-Commander had found him rotting away in his prison cell. _Prisoner’s garments_ ; no one should wear those willingly.

Anders would never understand him.

‘Really, Nathaniel,’ Anders found himself saying. The words formed before he could stop them—and his face had already formed the accompanying sneer. ‘There is a _reason_ they make _prisoners_ wear those clothes: because nobody but _prison wardens_ have to see them.’

‘Ah.’ Nathaniel looked down at his chest, then back up again. ‘Hello to you too, Anders.’

He melted back into his room, but left the door open like an invitation. His bow and arrows were on the chair again, his boots knocked one over the other underneath the bed. There was something cozy about the scene, and also familiar, even though the room’s lone occupant wasn’t the type to leave homey touches everywhere.

Maybe Anders was losing his mind—he could blame the darkspawn blood for that—and reading too much into the little details, but he felt almost special being allowed to view all this a second time.

It was an offer, or as much of a one as a person could get from a man as private as Nathaniel Howe.

Anders could consider him an expert in Howe-ian motives only now—only after the fact—because everything in his life worked that was. Royally bad timing was just another part of the Anders package. If he had a sovereign for every time one his escapes had been foiled by mere _minutes_ , then…

Then he would have exactly six sovereigns.

He didn’t count the seventh, because as escape plans went, this one was still going well. It’d kept him out of the tower, anyway, which was about as far in advance as Anders had ever thought. It was the only criterion that mattered, the only step that amounted to anything at all.

‘So,’ Anders said, readying himself to begin his mental tally anew. One hundred and something. Perhaps he’d finally lost count. ‘Do you want to show me your sextant, Nathaniel?’

‘That was not…’ Nathaniel began. Then, his eyes widened almost imperceptibly, and he looked away. ‘Ah. _That_ sextant,’ he concluded.

‘Because if you like celestial bodies all that much, I’ve got a moon for you to study right here,’ Anders added.

It was shameful how long it’d taken him to get that one out.

 

XV.

  
In general, Anders tried not to be a surprising person. Unpredictably hilarious, yes, and always ready with a clever line—even and especially when that clever line was inappropriate.

But when it came to destroying everyone’s perceptions of him—that he was nothing more than frivolous, and self-indulgent, and self-serving, and deplorably lazy—he didn’t like exceeding expectations. Once you’d done that, everyone assumed you’d do it again, and again, and again—and where did it stop? When would the people finally have enough of you?

When you were all used up, that was when. Just a dried-out husk of a man, giving and giving and never keeping any for yourself.

Anders wasn’t charitable that way; he was no Warden-Commander in the making, no hero, no martyr, no slayer of archdemons. He didn’t want to see innocents murdered or orphans crying, and mindless slaughter, especially of the gory kind, did make him throw up in the bushes. And he wasn’t about to go saving the world and making a name for himself—a name beyond _That Anders,_ followed by a fond roll of the eyes, the pounding of a fist into a meaty palm, bosoms clutched in titillation, and all that.

Yes, that was more than enough for him. Noble, lofty goals they might not have been, but they were goals nonetheless, and they were his to the last. Always had been; always would be. Anything else was just too much, and Anders didn’t appreciate what it’d do for his future prospects.

Noble, lofty people, for whatever reason, usually died too young. It was true that they were spoken of with reverence, even adoration, but Anders thought, given the choice, it was more appealing to be alive and merely tolerated instead of rotting in the ground while people only _then_ decided to love you.

However, there was one little thing that often _did_ surprise people—more people than one would think, considering the way things went in the Fereldan Circle of Magi, where Anders had been raised since time immemorial. Certainly, the place was all he could remember.

‘Where did you learn that, Anders?’ Nathaniel asked, lean chest bare, hair sweaty against his brow and neck.

Anders traced a rune-like pattern over his skin, waiting for his body to replenish itself so they could have another go. He didn’t need his staff to give them both a burst of rejuvenating energy—he needed another staff for other things, and now he _also_ needed the opportunity to work that line in somehow, just to see Nathaniel look proper and scandalized, and maybe intrigued as well.

‘Fighting demons and reading ancient texts gets boring after a while, when that’s _all_ you do,’ Anders explained, ‘and mages usually have excellent imaginations. I could tell you about the circle sometime, you know. But it’d curl your toes and turn the hair on your chest white—that’s how shocking it all is. Maybe I should write a book about it, or at the very least, I should dictate one.’

‘Maybe you should stop talking,’ Nathaniel suggested. ‘Considering how you almost talked yourself out of all this in the first place.’

‘Talked myself _out_ of it?’ Anders propped himself up one-handed on the other side of Nathaniel’s chest, leaning warm and eager over him, skin nearly touching; the small bed was making it impossible to be anything other than indecent with his hips and his legs, and he gave a pointed wiggle just for good measure. Nathaniel’s breath hissed between clenched teeth—for once, the perfect response. ‘It took all that talking to get you riled up in the first place! My dulcet tones, your eager ears… When opposites collide, when passions ignite—’

‘If you’d been a little quieter, it might have happened sooner,’ Nathaniel said.

‘Well, it only goes to show that good things happen to those who make frequent and stubborn mistakes,’ Anders replied, leaning down to kiss him for the thirtieth time. _And counting._ ‘Justice is alive and well in this world—don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.’

 **END**


End file.
